Heigh Ho

It is Monday and I have much work piled on my desk. It looks to be nice out, hot and humid already. The air conditioning is steaming the windows as it fights the hot air outside. We had a good weekend and I hope you did too. Perhaps more later.

Do not eat the brown acid

Three days of peace, love, and music. Woodstock was 46 years ago.

I wasn't there, I was only 7 for cripe's sake. Neither were half the people who claimed they were. I bet it was a lot of fun, though.

I would watch my Woodstock DVD this morning but the boy took it to school. I guess it is good he appreciates classic rock. When I was in high school WLS played "oldies". Since my car only had an AM radio, this was one of about four stations worth listening to. This old songs were only 20 or 25 years old in the 1970s. Most of what today is called classic rock is twice as old.

PS: Yes, I know this song was not played at the festival. Yes, CSN's version is better than Joni Mitchell's.

Mindless musings

We are babysitting for the granddaughter this weekend. It is amazing how quickly life's problems -- bills, health, money, work -- disappear when she smiles at me. I was sitting on the patio last night sipping a beer and smoking a cigar as the setting sun painted a few high clouds in pinks and reds and orange. Smoke hung above me in a faint cloud while the little fountain gurgled nearby. The big willow shadowed the back yard with regal flair. I am indeed blessed.

I am sitting in my office recliner this morning typing away at this entry. In the opposite corner, Charlie, my two-foot tall wooden cigar store Indian, stares at me with a stern expression, dreaming and straining with every wooden fibre to chop me to pieces with his little wooden tomahawk. Or perhaps he is naught but a piece of old tree cut and carved and painted for my artistic amusement.

A fake potted plant sits atop my desk, flanked on either side by my humidor and a model of the HMS Victory in full sail. The walls are hung with pictures of Johnny Cash, Wrigley Field, my true lamb skin college diploma, and Lucas Oil Stadium. Three stoneware beer mugs from Germany sit atop the computer cabinet next to the twin of the fake plant from my desk and one of those electronic picture frames loaded with pictures from our trip to Hawaii but turned off.

It is Saturday morning. The coffee is nearly gone. The day is just starting.

To the Batcave!

Yeah, yeah Friday music, no one cares. It is bumped down. I have better, more exciting news. A new donut emporium just opened in the strip mall over on the other side of the highway. The donuts are light and airy and soft and sweet and I want to eat several every day for every meal and get your hands outta that box they are mine, precious...

New people have moved in next door. So far they seem nice. I am somewhat concerned they are planning nefarious activities though. Other than needing a quick escape in the event of a SWAT raid, or sudden early morning attack from rogue Apaches, why would it be necessary to back your mini vans into the driveway? Maybe they are superheroes, poised to save suburbia from rogue student athletes selling discount shopping cards good at local businesses in order to help pay for new football equipment or volleyball knee pads. I don't know. Perhaps they need to get to the donut shop post haste and do not wish to be slowed by all of that tedious backing all the way down their one-car length driveway.

For that matter, what is up with the recent trend of backing into parking places? Back in, back out, you still have to drive in reverse. Assholes driving the wrong way down the aisles in parking lots so they can back in the open space are just a step above left lane lallygaggers in the hierarchy of jerk drivers. What is the point?

Groovy

The music is good, but the lyrics? Stitch, witch, ditch -- not exactly brilliant rhymes.

I confess, beyond three or four songs aI am not much of a Donovan fan. I did write about his music previously, in a roundabout fashion.l. I suppose it is the "head back to college" season that made me think of that old post from back in 2010.

In any case this lessor-known Donovan tune is your Friday music.

Dear GOP

...your strategy of positioning as Democrat-lite and turning your back on conservatism has won the popular vote in exactly one Presidential election in the past 24 years. Reagan's conservative platform won two landslide elections.

Facts are indeed stubborn things.

4985

Is it just me or has this place become stale? I think I need to change the template or something. Perhaps a new name? What? A new writer you say. Har har. This is my 4,985th post. I have been at this strange compulsion for ten years and 4 months. If my history-major math holds true that is right at 40 posts a month. Oh,I know some of you have been at it longer, a few post more often, most write better content. 5,000 seems like a nice round number. Maybe that is the change I need.

Humpity Hump

It looks to be a bright and sunny summer morning outside. I can only base my assessment on visuals since I have yet to venture outside. I am about to jump into the shower and head down to the hotel lobby for my powdered eggs or oatmeal or whatever offering looks the most appetizing.

I have a couple of customers to see this morning and afternoon then a long boring drive home. That is not a complaint, merely a statement of facts.

On Fox News they are talking about a convicted murderer in California who is about to get a sex change operation at taxpayer expense. Doctors say the prisoner will kill him/herself without the surgery. Part of me thinks society might be better off without this individual adding to carbon dioxide levels and causing global warming. Certainly the taxpayers will. I suspect the family of the person he murdered would agree.

I'm offended you find everything so offensive

A woman ran the London Marathon in April while on her period. I bet many did. But Kiran Gandhi did it sans tampon or pad. Why? Because tampons are misogynistic or something. She is tired of period shaming. Whatever that is. She is mad you won't sit around at work and share feelings with her about her period. I'm not making this up. I wish I was.

Gandhi told Cosmopolitan she thinks the social constructs around periods are based on misogyny. 

"I have this vision that if men had their period, because we are in a male-privileging society, that rules would be written into the workplace, rules would be written into the social fabric that enable men to take a moment when they need to or enable people to talk about their periods openly," she said  Link

Seriously, wearing a tampon is a sign of female oppression? I'm trying hard these days to reduce the amount I swear, but what the fuck? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a body function is just biology. I don't sit around and talk about my latest dump, or the scab I picked off my knee when I meet a customer. I do not want to hear about his chunky vomit or her monthly flow. I know it is modern culture, but we don't have to share everything. "Say, Jim, I shat a turd so big last night I thought it would rip apart my butthole."  Even Joan Rivers would have refused a talk about your period.

In other news, Target will no longer label departments as "boys" or "women" and will no longer separate stock based on gender because...well for reasons I don't understand. If little Jenny asks why the Legos are stocked over by the toy cars I would just say that is where the store keeps them and that answer would serve 999,999 kids out of 1,000,000. Once again we see a segment of society actively searching for reasons to be offended.

Guess what, men and women are different. Why don't we all just dress in a Mao uniform and be done with it? I find pinto beans, rap music, the Toyota Prius, and wearing pajamas bottoms to WalMart offensive. I don't insist these things be banned from society.

Under Pressure

Here we are on a bright and inviting Monday morning. The start of a new week. Our prospects are inviting. Optimism is high.

And I have nothing to offer you. I paid the gas bill this morning. Ooh ahhh. I'm going into the office for a while later today. Wow. The sheer excitement that makes up my life is overwhelming.

I'm alive and relatively  healthy. The coffee is hot and strong. The chocolate chip cookies the wife baked last night are sweet and chewy. Bumble bees are buzzing about the rose of Sharon outside the front door while a hummingbird hovers nearby. Lack of blog content isn't high on my list of worries. After all, I have managed to string letters in to words and words into semi-coherent sentences, and like a magician yanking a kicking bunny from a beaver hat, I have indeed conjured a meager post. This effort may not be witty, full of meaningful political content, or riveting prose, but it is a fair example of what a conversation with me would be Like this morning.

I hope you have a great day.

Liar, Liar

Yesterday I cut down a cedar tree and trimmed the branches and cut the trunk into manageable hunks.  Then I cut, chopped, hoed, and hand tilled about half the ground cover. No one asked, cajoled, or guilted me into working. It just needed done. No cigar, no book, no cold brew on the patio, just a lot of darn hard toil in the summer sun. But today...

Lazy

For the first time in months we have nothing scheduled for this weekend, as far as I know. Better yet, the yard is mowed and the house is reasonably clean. I'm sure the wife will conjure some project. The idea of sitting around with nothing to do is foreign to her. But I intend to resist her efforts to budge me out of the recliner or off the patio. I may take a walk or water the flowers, but I am not going to get into cutting down more trees or digging out the pernicious ground cover the previous owners planted under the big willow. I don't want to clean out the garage, or power wash the shutters and siding. I intend on smoking a cigar and reading a good book in the afternoon sun. I might take a nap.  Perhaps I will watch an old movie or two. Call me a no good lazy bum, for that is my goal today.

My take on the GOP debates

Bugs remains my favorite cartoon character and this episode in particular is a classic. There are so many funny things flashing by I still see new gags every time I watch it. I offer up some Looney Tunes in lieu of Friday Music. If you are really jonesing for some Foghat you can skip over to YouTube.

I did not watch the debates. Absurd and pointless theater has no attraction for me.

Thursday Liner Notes

I was set to pen a long post about Planned Parenthood last evening as I stared at the walls of this week's Hampton Inn. I even started research and writing. I ended up deleting it. You either understand the selling of baby parts is wrong or you don't. Nothing I write that no one reads is going to change the situation.  Can anyone explain why Democrats are against making birth control an over-the-counter medication?

I have had the weirdest dreams for the past several nights, unbelievably detailed and vivid. When I wake the substance of the dream fades as quickly as the hole a pebble makes when you toss it into a pond, but the idea that the dream was there is as tangible as the ripples on the water. Strange, I rarely dream and doing so multiple nights in a row is unusual.

Windshield time is not conducive to a positive outlook on life. I-70 in particular seems to wear me down and over the decades I have found this true of the roadway no matter what part of the country it traverses, perhaps because it is mostly a straight slash across the center of the nation. The highway seems to be a weird dividing line for weather; above gets snow, below does not or below sees rain, above the road none. It also seems to be an almost modern Mason-Dixon Line dividing cultures and dialects. I know this to be somewhat true in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. I am not sure if the pattern holds sway in other parts of the country. It is also quite likely the whole idea is a figment of my imagination. Anyway, from Harrisburg to Kansas City and beyond the road is boring unattractive and dull. How US 40, which covers pretty much the same exact ground can be so much more interesting is beyond me. Of course the old National Road will take you twice as long to get you where you are going.

I think that is enough mundane, incoherent, soporific scribbling for today. Who in the heck writes whole paragraphs and posts about highways? It's a road.

I'm Full of It

Recently the wife scored some big T-bone steaks on sale. These babies would have tempted a vegetarian. They were an inch thick and weighed in at about a pound each. I soaked some fresh sweet corn in water then threw it on the grill in the husk beside the steaks. I baked a couple of spuds and sliced a red and a yellow tomato straight out of my tiny garden.  I managed to cook the beef perfectly. It was a gut busting feast fit for a king. Were I a poet, I would pen an ode to that summer supper. I ate until I thought I would explode like Mr. Creosote.

After dinner the wife and I sat on the patio enjoying the mild evening. I came in and cleaned the mess while she pruned some flowers. Then I watered the tomatoes and flowers behind her. Since I had over-eaten at supper there was only one remedy: dessert. I cut up some strawberries and served them over slices of pound cake. The wife had whipped cream. I opted to soak the mess in milk. Shut up I like it that way. 

I fell asleep on the couch in a gluttonous haze.  Yes, this is reason 1,411 you wish you were me.

What's for breakfast?

Enough about the stupid dead lion already.

Learn something, damn it

I get it. Long summer breaks lead to retention issues in the schools. Teachers have to spend weeks teaching what the kids learned the previous spring. School grades and administrator and teacher evaluations depend on the students getting up to speed. I don't care. August 1 is too early to head back to school.

When I reflect on my youth almost every happy memory is from the summer: vacations, bike rides, cruising, swimming, summer camp, baseball, drive-in movies. Many years we did not go to summer camp until August. The Little League World Series and the State Fair haven't even happened yet.This year we have had such a wet and cool summer I bet the kids feel like they never even had a break.

It is important our kids get an education. They also need time to be kids.

Dear Politicians

If that rule, regulation, or law you propose really was "just common sense" then we really would not need legislation to force us to comply.

It will be just like floating the Amazon, only different

It looks to be a fine day here in the Hoosier Heartland. This afternoon we will sally forth to attend the company picnic. The festivities will begin with a canoe trip followed by a catered affair. It looks like it will be in the mid 80s and low humidity for the event. I can live with that.

I'm no stranger to a canoe. We owned one when I was a kid. As a young Boy Scout I earned the canoeing merit badge. One year the troop took a week-long canoe trip down the Wabash a River in lieu of going to a sanctioned summer camp. We had great fun. I used to be able to pilot an 18 foot canoe solo with ease. I imagine the old skills remain, I have not been in a canoe for a couple of decades at this point. We shall see. Unless one of my fellow employees rams us or my wife leans us over, I am confident I can make the trip without soaking more than my shoes. That is my intent anyway.

Rain is forecast this week so I will probably try to get the yard mowed after the picnic. That is unless I am too tired or just do not want to. I hope you have a good Sunday.

Stale donuts suck

Good morning blog world. I ventured forth this morning to procure some donuts for breakfast. I was somewhat disappointed and just a little miffed to find my first cinnamon twist more than a bit stale. One would think that the donuts at 6:30 in the morning should be fresh and soft. I went to the higher priced local joint instead of the big chain. My Dunkin' Donuts are always fresh. i tossed that donut, but the second choice (old fashioned cake) was only marginally better. I guess the donut chef came in late today, so I got yesterday's creations. That's what I get for going early.

Stale donuts are but an inconvenience on this otherwise beautiful day.

Ps confidential to Fuzzy: it is impossible to comment at your site. You are in my prayers during these tough times.